alx5000 writes: "Not that long after Apple's iPhone 4 Antennagate, it's now Google's turn to remind us how smartphones are increasingly more "smart" and less "phone": a failure on the new Nexus S makes the phone reboot mid-call mostly during calls longer that 3 minutes, but even during shorter ones. If this turns to be a software problem, things could get hairy, with Gingerbread for the rest of Android terminals just around the corner."

alx5000 writes: "The Times is running a story about a neurologic breakthrough that could revolutionise treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s: Neurons have been created directly from skin cells for the first time. Quoting neurobiologist Professor Jack Price, 'This suggests that there are no great rules — you can reprogramme anything into anything else.' The article also points out that this method could work around the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem-cell research."

alx5000 writes: "A group of neuroscientists from Rutgers University have shown that the commonly accepted idea that there's a correlation among the spikes of neighboring neurons when fed shared input may be wrong (Google translation from Spanish). From the (paywalled) abstract: 'Near-zero mean correlations were seen experimentally in recordings from rodent neocortex in vivo. Our results suggest a reexamination of the sources underlying observed correlations and their functional consequences for information processing.'"

alx5000 writes: "I work for a small government organization with around 30 users, and for some time now we've been having doubts about TrendMicro OfficeScan's efficiency. The last straw was a couple of trojan droppers appearing on one of the IT trainees' computer yesterday, with no warning whatsoever from the real-time protection agent. From your own experience, which antivirus software would you recommend, based on real-time detection ability, response time for new viruses and price?"

alx5000 writes: "A friend of mine (no, really) has been tasked with developing a replacement for a one client / many servers database system. The problem is the client wants to replace the current server hardware with Nios II-based systems running Clinux (no fork, PIC, XIP, etc). I've tried to come up with a solution involving SQLite (since it's really easy to port), either using a lightweight server, or sharing the DB files via NFS, but neither seems to combine flexibility (chaging the host to connect to easily) and backward compatibility (existance of an ODBC driver). Does anyone know of any networked RDBMS that can run on Clinux and provides an ODBC driver?"

alx5000 writes: "In an interview conceded last week to Consumer Eroski (Spanish, sorry), Tetris father, Alexey Pajitnov, claimed that "Free Software should have never existed", since it "destroys the market" by bringing down companies who create wealth and prosperity. When inquired about RH or Oracle's support-oriented model, he called them "a minority", and also criticised Stallman's ideas as "belonging to the past" where there were no software "business posibilities"."

alx5000 writes: "meneame.net (the Spanish Digg) is reporting that a German hacker has posted an undeletable porn video on YouTube. So far, the video has been watched more than 100,000 times since it was posted 2 days ago, and the account of the poster blocked, but the video still remains viewable. You can watch it here (NSFWFGS!)"

alx5000 writes: "Last Tuesday Google stock price crossed over the $500 line, and closed around $510. With all the talk around YouTube's acquisition, especially when it comes to the numers involved, one can not help wondering if we will soon face the explosion of Bubble 2.0. Do you think Google is heading towards the top of a mountain it won't be able to climb? Will this smooth sailing will end up in an abrupt shipwreck?"